The Choices - Seven Metal Analog Pedal under $90

1-BOSS MT-2 Metal Zone US$86.95 Check latest price

Hook Metal Zone up to 12" guitar amp speaker feed by humbucker pickup and you get the cruelest distortion of metal. If you're hunting for classic heavy/thrash metal scooped rhythm: early Metallica, Black sabbath, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax and 80ies thrash/heavy metal band, you nailed it right with Metal Zone.

This is NOT pedal for smooth lead, blues, grunge, alternative or hard/classic rock crunchy overdrive. Nor the one deems dynamic playing, soft picking sweet and warm lullaby. BOSS Metal Zone is all about gritty raw badass metal distortion. It boosts harmonics and perfectly, lengthen sustain and fatten up the tones. "chug" palm-muting Hetfield-trade mark delivers thumping speaker cone like crazy. The tone control with sweepable mid frequency provides huge tone-shaping possibilities. As it name suggests, if you're playing with low gain/distortion for the purpose other than metal, you'll end up with mushy undefined muddy tone. The same results happened if the distortion and bass knob dialed too much (past 3 o'clock approx.). For live gig, be careful with distortion control to keep your tone cut through the mix.

what's hot: sweepable (parametric) mid frequency

what's not: noise

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2-BOSS MD-2 Mega Distortion US$79.95 Check latest price

Less brute than Metal Zone but has thicker big bottom, it's a MD-2. Equipped with distortion knob to control amount of distortion and gain knob to control compression and warmth, MD-2 fulfills player's requirement of thicker low end without excessive scoop metal crunch (MD-2 has less gain than MT-2).

Forget this pedal if you want aggressive rhythm metal distortion. It tends to a fuzz overdrive instead of distortion, but the harmonics produced was less than the classic Big Muff. This pedal best suited for Santana-like solo character, flowing warmth-of-tube sound and industrial dark/gothic rock similar like Rammstein, Queen of The Stone Age or early Monster Magnet.

what's hot: gain knob controls warmth of tube effect

what's not: less harmonics, noise, the "Mega Distortion" nameplate was a joke

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3-ZOOM Tri-Metal TM-01 (Discontinued) approx. $60 used price.

What you can expect from three cascade gain analog stages? a brutal monstrous pedal for down-tuned hi-gain distortion: nu, black, thrash, doom, death metal, grindcore all are the places. This is the Metal Zone MT-2 with big bottom of steel. A nice feature is built-in noise reduction (not a noise gate, but a low noise circuit design) so the noise is virtually absent compared to other analog pedals. The harmonics created were rich and smooth as well as sustain.

This brute nasty Zoom is best suited for down-tuned guitar strings with blasting aggressive riff picking; your riff sound will cut through showing its presence menacingly. Use high output pickup to achieve impressive palm-muting chug (active one is recommended). Beware of excessive setting in bass and gain (past 3 o'clock approx.) as the low end will getting muddy and undefined. Same thing happened if you use low gain, the tone getting dull and lifeless as its contrary of what Tri-Metal was designed for.

what's hot: built-in noise suppressor, big bottom tone

what's not: sadly ZOOM discontinued this product. Why? ask them

4-Rocktron Rampage US$59.95 Check latest price 

Rampage has less gain than common metal distortion, but it has good sustain knob to control the longevity of your tones. Smoother than MT-2, this gear matches quite broad range of metal style from heavy shred/tapping style or classic metal heroes like Led Zeppelin, Megadeth, Iron Maiden sound to thrash metal fury, thanks to it's precisely brain-surgery knives of tone control.

what's hot: tone control knobs do the job

what's not: noise, less distortion gain

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5-Marshall Jackhammer JH-1 US$69.95 Check latest price 

Marshall did the good job combining overdrive-distortion in one box. From bluesy overdrive to full distortion came out of this pedal are achievable through overdrive-distortion switch. It responds nicely against picking dynamic and pickup volume to boast from smooth clean drive to crunchy rhythm until heavy lead solos harmonics rich. Tone shaping greatly accomplished by contour (mid cut) and sweepable centered frequency (to be cut) knob similar like parametric equalizer. Though the distortion channel able to boost Marshall-like stack, still the Jackhammer couldn't beat the raw aggressive "trebly" Metal Zone.

what's hot: natural overdrive

what's not: noise, bassy distortion

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6-DigiTech Metal-Master X-Series US$89.95 Check latest price

Metal Master is the best of both worlds: metal crunchy rhythm and cutting edge solo. Including cabinet simulator built in so you can plug directly into PA console or multitrack recording without hassle of cabinet miking placement. What a bit downside is no distortion knob provided to control grittiness crunch level, but who cares about distortion control if you play only badass raw muddafukkin' death metal? if so, the pedal is for you. In fact, the distortion character offered is rich in harmonics and clearly presence notes yet delivers focused aggressivity.

The morph knob provides array of metal distortion possibilities (that's might answers why distortion level is not provided, to keep the swiss-army knife distortion sound away from fuzzy) as well as spectral equalization knobs for tone shaping. This is ZOOM Tri-Metal with buit-in cabinet simulator. If you like DigiTech Death Metal pedal, you will like this one since this pedal covers fairly broad range of aggressive distortion from BOSS Metal Zone to DigiTech Death Metal.

what's hot: real death metal down-tuned sound

what's not: noise

Hear the sound samples/more info

Final Words

Of course, there are lots of better analog pedal out there than any pedal listed in this article (SansAmp GT-2 , ToneBone Radial Hot British , Mesa/Boogie V-Twin "the real tube" to name a few more expensive ones) but if you're constrained by budget, you still have a choice to pursue your dream of tonal voyage. Hope this article helps, and happy hunting the brutal tones.

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